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PROLOGUEWalking through the doors of the Alexander Hope Institute, the tall attractive figure headed down the main hallway with an air of ownership hovering above her head. Her high-heeled steps clicked steady and even, a sure purpose in mind, one rocking her soul. The receptionist, bearing an uncanny likeness to Bette Midler, smiled at her and nodded her approval for the woman to continue on her way. Without losing stride, the lady smiled and bowed her head courteously in return. There would be no need for her to report to the front desk to identify herself or sign in. The receptionist knew her. Lately, she came to this place a lot. A lot more than most, the woman behind the desk reflected. She felt sorry for her. The boy she would be visiting was quadriplegic. To make matters worse, he couldn't communicate with his mother at all, let alone members of the staff.
Certain members of the hospital Board, however, felt the boy to be just overly-obstinate. Others believed his problem to be a psychosis of sorts. Many of them were convinced, that after his accident, the boy had shut himself in, closed himself off from the world. He had turned out all his inner lights, refused all contacts with reality from that day forward. Whatever the root of his inner problem, his days out of bed would be spent sitting in a wheelchair by the window staring out at nothing. It was a shame, a damn shame.
The attending nurse on the ward, Ilda Brehmer, knew the visitor would be arriving shortly. The attractive woman seemed always in the habit of showing up on a Friday and usually around three in the afternoon. At precisely fifteen minutes before Leona Hampton's usual hour ofarrival, Ilda would hustle her buns. She'd convince a couple of the floor orderlies to aid her in getting the boy out of bed and propped up properly in his wheelchair. The two straps--one across his chest and the other across his abdomen--would then be adjusted to keep him from keeling over. Once they had him strapped in and presentable, his chair would be wheeled over to a spot in front of the big bay window. While her patient remained motionless in front of her, nurse Brehmer would haul out a comb and brush back his hair. She'd spend the next few minutes straightening out his collar, taking the creases out of his pajamas. When finished, she'd stand back and give him an Army Colonel's scrutiny. Satisfied that he now looked his best, she'd take her leave, meet the woman in the hallway and show her into the room.
Leona never stayed too long. Back in the early days when she first started coming around, she always had trouble containing herself. She would become overly-emotional and would burst into tears without any warning. More than once she had been perceived hurrying from the room and running to the nearest washroom down the hall. She couldn't cope with what she faced at all. Her son, like any other boy his age, used to play ball, laugh and roll around on the grass with his friends. Now, and for the rest of his days, he would be confined to a wheelchair. To Leona, he had become a living and breathing vegetable.
When his mother would visit him, the boy wouldn't so much as flinch with recognition, or respond emotionally to her in any way. He would sit and blink like a road beacon, his eyes focusing on nothing in particular at the outside world beyond his window. After several visits though, the woman grew accustomed to his ritual and in her way had come to grips with it.
Today would be no different. After being courteously led into the room, she stood quietly for a moment and eyed her paralytic son from the doorway. Finally, breathing a deep sigh, she marched directly over to the window area with a renewed sense of purpose.
In the background and watching every move, Nurse Brehmer marveled after her. The woman had guts, she had to admit that. She never gave up trying to get through to her boy. To reach him. The woman had to be a saint. Today though, the visitor to the ward appeared to be overly-tired and drawn out. She seemed to be calling on a reserve bank of energy to help her in greeting her son while trying to maintain an effervescent smile on her face. She didn't appear to be up to such a lengthy visit this time around. On most days, yes, but not today.
Something bothered her. She acted as if she were carrying the weight of a thousand confessions locked tightly away in her soul. It didn't matter how much rouge or makeup she'd worked into her face, either. She couldn't fool Ilda. Probably working her sweet little ass off standing on her feet all day in a poor man's restaurant, Ilda thought. Working her dear little heart out while her husband's off feeling some hussy's rear-end in a local bar. With a shake of her head and fully convinced that her observations were right on target, Ilda mumbled something about men going to be a sorry lot someday and hurried off to her other duties.
Sitting down in the straight-back chair provided for her, Leona studied her son for a short eternity. She positioned herself slightly off to the right of him. He could see her if he wanted to. He could look out of the corner of his eye, or turn his head slightly. He didn't, nor did he try. She wondered again, as she had so often in the past, if he really knew that she sat here visiting him at all.
The doctors had told her long ago that they didn't believe there to be any serious brain damage. When he'd fallen, the boy had banged his head pretty hard. There were signs of concussion but they didn't believe for a minute that major damage had occurred in the boy's brain. Since they were unable to get through to the boy, either verbally or through a series of various tests, they eventually agreed that the boy quite possibly suffered from global amnesia. A state of existence, nothing more. He would remain unreachable by modern standards. They could do nothing to set him right again. The boy's mind would have to do on its own accord. Shock therapy had been applied but failed to produce tangible results. There was nothing more to be done. Time was the best healer, and someday might bring back a world of memories to the boy. As far as most of his case doctors knew, the young lad wasn't aware yet that he was paralyzed. It would be yet another traumatic incident he'd have to learn to deal with once he broke free of his mental handcuffs and finally came around.
No matter how bleak things looked though, Leona never lost hope. She talked to him steadily, didn't let up for a minute, and only did so when she finally ran out of things to say. Would there be a glint of recognition in his eyes, one day? Would he snap out of his crazy merry-go-round of an existence? Turn around and say to her, "M-mom, I love you," or, "Yeah, I remember that!"
Someday, perhaps, but not today.
Before she began her round of motherly love therapy, the woman pulled a stick of Wrigley's out of her handbag and popped it into her mouth. It was not something she did out of habit but rather as a method of keeping the saliva in her mouth for the long conversation ahead. Of course, she saw a drinking fountain out in the hallway, one within easy reach. She'd decided it better though not to break her routine and walk away from him, lest she forgot what she'd been talking about. She firmly believed that it wouldn't do her son any good for her to change the subject--any subject--midstream. If he could hear her, perhaps understand some of what she said, it would only confuse him all the more if she started babbling on about something else, altogether. She couldn't be sure of her prognosis of him, but whatever the case, she decided not to take any chances.
After working the gum around in her mouth for a few minutes, Leona took a deep breath and began. As usual, she talked only of pleasant things. Never about the troubles that plagued her life. She would begin by mentioning the weather, talk of any sport that happened to fit the season. She'd then ramble on about the scenery around town, especially the parks, a squirrel or bird she had seen, and of other children out in the sunlight having a glorious time. From there she'd whirl into the world of heavy metal music that he liked. By reading most rock magazines, she could keep up with the latest on all his favorite bands. Although she hated the music with a fury beyond words, she talked as if the band members were her idols.
When the time came and she finally run out of things to say, she got up, kissed him curtly on the cheek and held him for a short eternity. "Get well, son," she said, tears coming to her eyes. "Get well and come home." They were brave words. Well said. Any hope though of the boy ever recovering overnight or in the near future had to be a tad shy of an honest-to-goodness miracle. With one final hug, she turned and marched right on out of the room without looking back. If she had turned, she would fall victim to a surprise in her life like no other.
As her heels clicked across the tiled floor, the boy's head suddenly swung in her wake. He scowled at her, his eyes screaming an unheard hatred. If he could speak right now, he would have hurled more obscenities her way than an entire brigade could've fired verbally at opposing forces during a tour of Iraq.
As she neared the door, she sensed something and stopped dead in her tracks. Turning her head sharply around, she glanced back at her son. Cautious. Expectant. A hint of fear. She sighed again. As she'd expected, he'd not moved. He sat in the same position he'd been in when she'd first arrived. His head faced the window and his eyes blankly homed-in on the sea of grass outside the building and the numerous tall pines that lined the Institute grounds. Things that others now believed he did not see or consider to exist.
Yet, for a brief moment she'd been sure she had felt his eyes scratching at the skin on her back. At least, someone's eyes on her. It was an eerie feeling. Like someone peeking at you from between the crack of a partially-opened closet door. But the closet door was closed and Leona saw no one else in the room. Shrugging it off as a totally preposterous feelings brought on by an attack of guilt and despair, she continued on her way.
Nurse Brehmer arrived in the room moments later. She felt that strange coldness again. It always happened, every Friday, right after the woman left. During those times, she always hated being alone with the boy. She never could figure out the reasoning behind it all, but her imagination always got the better of her. She could actually picture the boy jumping out of his chair and throwing his hands around her throat in an effort to strangle the life out of her. Yet, that was impossible. "Awfully silly," she scolded herself as she always did as a way of helping to calm her jittery nerves.
Ilda's attempt, though, at quelling her inner fears never did work and she doubted they ever would.
